


Bone Mortar

by mightbewriting



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Academia, F/M, Romance, Scientist!Draco, historian!hermione, intellectual idiots fighting over a classroom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23755612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbewriting/pseuds/mightbewriting
Summary: Draco clenched his teeth, forcing sharp, shallow breaths through his nose as he ripped open the door to his usual lecture hall only to find— someone at his desk. Well, he supposed it was technically lesshisdesk and morethedesk as he didn’t actually own this particular classroom. But since he’d taught in it for the last four semesters in a row he at least felt like he’d earned common law ownership of some sort.The girl—  woman— entity presently possessed by what looked like a semi-sentient mass of curls atop her head, looked up, eyes widening before she graced the space between them with a kind smile that could cut through any density of grit or dust or grime. The sort of simple smile that could pulverize rocks: be them buried in the earth or caged behind ribs.He stared at her, belatedly and painfully aware that his mouth had curled into a sneer mostly without his consent.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 296
Kudos: 1010





	1. ACT I, SCENE I: Observation

**Author's Note:**

> oh hey, what's up? welcome to the story that just kind of happened.  
> an ENORMOUS and AGGRESSIVE thank you to [icepower55](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/9423984/icepower55) who is entirely at fault for causing my brain to think of this story. As such, I forced her to alpha/beta for me and she has been a complete gift! additional aggressive thanks are owed to [EndlessMoonChild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndlessMoonChild/pseuds/EndlessMoonChild) who saved me from my writing on more than one occasion, philosophical spiral about postwar satellite states aside.
> 
> how do we feel about daily updates? we feel good about that? this is a short little thing, ~10k words across 6 parts. i'm thinking daily updates and a two-for-one on friday just because i can xD
> 
> happy reading!

_“Epilogue for a beginner: another of the many—you other one! Shall I go on living?”_

**-Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside**

Draco

Introduction to Paleoanthropology. Introduction to Paleo-fucking-anthropology. Draco had to teach a glorified ancient history class cross-listed with the _anthropology_ department in order to fill the teaching requirements of the grant that paid for his research. In what world, in what fucking world, does someone equate a practical skillset extracting and sequencing ancient and extinct genomes with anything even remotely resembling an anthropology department?

The administrative idiots at Hogwarts University, apparently.

When he’d agreed, quite graciously, to teach undergrads this year he presumed he’d be teaching something to do with genetics, DNA sequencing, fuck, he’d even be amenable to teaching the basics of the scientific method over something as muddled and soft as paleoanthropology. It was soft science, social science playing pretend as something critical and concrete. The ongoing taxonomical debates in the field alone were enough to put Draco off anything outside the immutable facts found in DNA.

It didn’t matter whether the specimen ended up classified as _homo habalis_ or _homo ergaster_. The DNA didn’t change based on what a group of idiots decided to name it. Though Draco did make an exception for phylogenetic bracketing only insofar as it relied upon statistics and not opinions to sort taxonomy. 

And Snape had barely given him a week to plan the course before the autumn term started. Administrative mix-up, his arse.

Draco clenched his teeth, forcing sharp, shallow breaths through his nose as he ripped open the door to his usual lecture hall only to find— someone at his desk. Well, he supposed it was technically less _his_ desk and more _the_ desk as he didn’t actually own this particular classroom. But since he’d taught in it for the last four semesters in a row he at least felt like he’d earned common law ownership of some sort.

The girl— woman— entity presently possessed by what looked like a semi-sentient mass of curls atop her head, looked up, eyes widening before she graced the space between them with a kind smile that could cut through any density of grit or dust or grime. The sort of simple smile that could pulverize rocks: be them buried in the earth or caged behind ribs. 

He stared at her, belatedly and painfully aware that his mouth had curled into a sneer mostly without his consent. Her smile faltered, though only just. A sense of familiarity shot through his prefrontal cortex, seeking recognition.

“Hello,” she said with a touch of hesitance as she failed, miserably, to sweep some of her hair behind her ear. It burst free almost immediately, and even from his place at the door, he could see the wild strands stretch and contract under the gravity that governed them. Spiralling, not unlike the double helix in a strand of DNA. 

He remembered himself. He neutralized his features; this woman bore no responsibility to the current clusterfuck his autumn term had already descended into.

“Apologies,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone here. Are you teaching in this room as well?”

She began gathering the collection of books spread out across the desk as Draco walked towards the front of the room, each step even and precise, calming. She looked like she planned to leave, which made no sense. If she had this room part of the week too then she needn’t vacate just because of him and his foul mood barging in and interrupting.

“I am. Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she smiled at him again and he found he rather liked the way it stretched to her eyes, a kind of unguarded offering of warmth he had no idea how to manage for himself. But on the tail end of that thought, he frowned.

“Tuesdays and Thursdays? I have this room Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

She cocked her head slightly, a small line forming between her brows before she started fumbling with her things again, pulling out a cell phone and scrolling. Draco did the same, looking for his term assignments from Professor Snape.

She made a small noise of triumph he should have found irritating. She flipped her phone around to present an email from a different department clearly assigning Tuesday and Thursday in this particular hall to something titled: _Postwar Germany: 1945-1989._ Draco could feel incredulity tightening the muscles around his eyes, causing a small twitch in his brow as he fought the urge to furrow.

What in the ever-living fuck was a class like that doing in the Slytherin Science Lab’s only acceptable lecture hall?

“Oh— I know you,” she burst suddenly, pocketing her phone as if the matter of biweekly ownership over this hall and its consistently functioning air conditioning, exceptional acoustics, and proximity to his office were settled. It most certainly was not.

He arched a brow at her, struck again by the familiarity he couldn’t place.

“I think we had a class together in undergrad,” she clarified. “Twentieth Century Europe.”

He’d groaned before he could stop himself.

“General education. Fucking miserable.”

“You certainly didn’t seem like you were having a good time. I recall a bit of a riot over _real academics_.”

He remembered it too.

“That was a long time ago,” he said. Years, in fact. “How do you remember that?” 

She rolled her eyes at the barely veiled implication in his words. He didn’t need her to confirm he was memorable. He had a peculiar name, bright blonde hair, an intolerance for idiots, and a keen sense of self-awareness. And he knew that most women who remembered him tended to remember him for his face and his hair almost exclusively. Disappointing, really.

“I have an excellent memory. Besides,” she shoved a few more of her books into an already burdened leather satchel, near bursting at the seams. “It’s not every day you witness someone almost defend Nazi Eugenics. Even if it was an accident.” She smirked at him, she actually smirked.

Draco found he rather wanted to find out how that smirk tasted. Which was an intrusive, unwanted thought that barreled from whatever intimacy-deprived parts of his brain reminded him that it had been far too long since he’d shagged someone. 

More important than that, though, she was wrong.

“That’s not what happened at all,” he said, rougher than he intended. He tapped his fingers against the desk, channeling some of his agitation. 

“If you’ll recall with your excellent memory,” he leaned a hip against the desk, crossing his arms as he watched her waiting, admittedly quite patiently, for his explanation. “I was merely trying to explain the value of genomics in illuminating the _similarities_ between people, not their differences. Hard science, not fluffy facts like whatever that class was meant to be about. And then, as if I could help it, some idiot in the class pointed out that I shared a surname with a well-known family of collaborators within the Vichy Government. I _tried_ to explain how hard science and genetic research actually helped after the war, why it was valuable to have incontrovertible facts available to _disprove_ my family’s prejudices but all anyone could—”

She laughed, bringing Draco’s steadily swelling indignation to heel. His feet felt sticky, sunk into a mud beneath his feet, trapped in a memory of being horribly misconstrued. 

“I see you’ve let it go,” she commented, picking up a notebook from the desk. 

“I had an entire class of dim-witted history majors barring their outraged teeth at me.”

“I was a history major,” she intoned. “This is a history class,” she gestured around her.

“Which brings us back to the question: why is it being held in Slytherin? This is supposed to be my classroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” 

“Gryffindor Hall had a massive leak last week. The whole department is displaced until they finish repairs.”

Draco’s fingers wandered to the last book on the table, toying with it. He tilted his head, confused, as he read the title.

“Is this for the class?” he asked, genuine curiosity stealing his focus.

“It is,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicion evident as she fiddled with the small cargo ship’s worth of personal property stuffed into her satchel.

“But it’s a play.”

“You’re not really a fan of interdisciplinary learning, are you?” she asked, lobbing him a pointed look. It crackled. She crackled. She tried to hide it, he could tell, but their conversation had wound her up, even if just a bit.

“I prefer data, facts. Not conjecture.” He flipped the book open, scanning in an idle attempt at casual disinterest.

He saw her jaw flexing and he found himself inappropriately pleased to have irritated her. She became a target the moment she stole his favorite lecture hall from him.

“I supposed you’d consider an evaluation of postwar German reconstruction as just a bit of conjecture?”

“If it involved plays?” he asked, holding up the book in his hands. “Sounds more like an English department situation. Perhaps you can see if Ravenclaw Hall has rooms available on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“No need. I have this one.”

Draco stilled, eyes narrowed as he watched her in what she surely thought was her victory. He looked down at the book in his hands, a play he’d never heard of nor had need to know. 

When he looked back up at her she had her hands on her hips, lips straddling the line between amusement and annoyance. 

“You can borrow that, I have plenty of copies,” she said before he’d decided exactly how to inform her that she wouldn’t have the room for long. 

She slung her bag over her shoulder where it caught and pulled at her mass of curls. She struggled, pulled by the weight of it as she tried to free her hair from beneath the strap.

Her air of victory vanished as she made an annoyed noise, tendrils stretching to a near impossible length, straightened, as she tried to liberate them.

“Christ— just, let me,” Draco stepped forward, fingers brushing against her upper arm as he lifted the strap just enough so that her hair could slip free. She looked up at him with wide brown eyes again, just like when he’d entered the room, familiarity placed from a chance coincidence years earlier. 

In her personal space, he could smell the vanilla rolling off of her: a shampoo? A lotion? A perfume? 

He dropped his hand from the strap, traitorous digits seeking the feeling, just for a moment, of a curl against his skin. Awareness of the biology didn’t stem the surprise of chemicals flooding his brain and clouding his cognition. He felt the frustrated rush of attraction towards this soft creature of conjecture before he had a chance to stop it. 

She gave him another smile, this one guarded, like she didn’t quite know what to do with him. He didn’t quite know what to do with himself, either.

She stepped away, leaving him at the front of what he’d thought would be his classroom for the semester. “Just leave it in the desk when you’re done with it,” she said over her shoulder. And he realized she meant the play he still had clutched in one hand. “I’ll just grab it during one of my classes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

He only smiled at her admirable snark after she’d gone.

Observation: she’d riled him. 

He liked it.


	2. ACT I, SCENE II: Research

_“The dirty little secret of genomics is that we still know next to nothing about how a genome translates into the particularities of a living and breathing individual.”_

**-Svante Paabo, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes**

Hermione

With barely a week until the start of the autumn term, Hermione felt good. Exceptionally good, in fact. Her syllabus had come together beautifully, better than she’d expected. It may have taken a small arsenal of new books and some heavy negotiations over the book limit at the library, but she felt tremendous pride in the overall efficacy of her examination of the human experience in post war Germany. 

On top of all that, her chance encounter with an unreasonably attractive scientist worked into a fit about a classroom assignment had been the small distraction she needed from her endless preparations. Especially when such chance encounters included the opportunity to engage in a little casual verbal sparring while enjoying her position firmly in ownership of his desired classroom.

In all fairness, it was a very nice lecture hall and it made Hermione wonder where exactly the Slytherin Labs got their funding. Everything about the Slytherin building reeked of wealthy donors: from the gratuitous technological features to the fact that she only had to share her fifth floor office with _one_ other person in a time when an entire department’s worth of personnel had been displaced. Under normal operating procedures, she shared her office in Gryffindor Hall with at least two other people year round, forcing her into a never ending battle of books and office hours and the quest for quiet. 

She stopped dead in her tracks, several twists and turns of labyrinthian hallways from her assigned office space. She blinked, brows shooting upward at the sight of the same unreasonably attractive scientist framed perfectly on the other side of his open office door, sitting behind a desk with a book in his hands. 

She’d never given much thought to gold wire-frame glasses before. She might have the day before if he’d been wearing them during their classroom confrontation. It was truly a shame that someone so irritable and unyielding had to look like such a dream of academia. 

Hermione smiled despite the twinge in her spine from the several kilos worth of books hanging from her shoulder. She had to walk by his office to get to her own, and as enjoyable as riling and being riled had been, she did have things she needed to do. Hermione continued towards her own office in as normal a pace as she could manage, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the distance between her steps, the sound of the soles of her shoes, and the subject of her focus on anything not the blond man at his desk. 

And she immediately froze when he glanced up from his book and cocked his head at the sight of her.

“Oh,” he started. “It’s you.”

She nearly cringed at the impressive combination of recognition and dismissal. However, as her steps faltered in front of his door at the sound of his not-quite-bored voice, her bag of books finally made their escape, slipping to the floor with a comically loud thud, hijacking her instincts to respond. 

She sighed, accepting the moment of embarrassment for what it was as she held the bridge of her nose before massaging along her brow ridge. She knelt, gathering her tomes and running through several excuses to remove herself from campus quickly and efficiently. With her small portable library situated, she stood again and chanced mortification by looking at him. His pale brows had risen above the frame of his glasses, amusement peeking through his serious exterior.

“Long day?” he asked.

Hermione bristled, realizing he hadn’t even feigned the courtesy of helping her retrieve her books. He’d just sat there, observing.

“Just heading to my office,” she said, gesturing vaguely in the direction that did not lead directly into his own.

Oh, but she couldn’t help herself. Now that she’d let herself look. His office was _interesting_ , damn him. Beyond the impressive collection of books on topics she knew next to nothing about and therefore felt an intrinsic pull to learn, he had all kinds of science equipment she could only think to describe as ‘beakers’ and ‘vials’ and ‘test tubes,’ which was probably a gross oversimplification she had a feeling would annoy him. And then there were the bones, which added a distinct layer of morbidity and, in a weird way, whimsy to the otherwise sterile and pristine space.

She _really_ couldn’t help herself.

“So what exactly do you teach?” she asked, taking a half-step closer to his office door. With restraint, she pointedly did not mention anything about _where_ he might be teaching.

He scoffed, “I’ve been saddled with an intro paleoanthropology course this semester. But my research is in ancient DNA, sequencing extinct genomes. I’ve been focused primarily on mapping ancient hominid DNA, specifically.”

Hermione hid her smile by taking another half step, now fully in his office, and examining the row of books by the door. She knew that kind of answer. One that downplayed the thing he found beneath him and made a point to show off the more impressive things he knew. 

It was a habit Hermione tried very hard to break in herself as it apparently made her look like an unlikeable know-it-all. It was the same reason she’d trained herself to tell her friends and family that she studied postwar German history instead of the social impact of state-sponsored surveillance on civilians in East Germany. Apparently, if someone wanted that much information, they’d ask.

She liked that she didn’t have to ask. In fact, she very much wanted to ask more. Most of what he’d said flew straight above her head, not that she’d willingly admit that to him. She suspected he’d enjoy that more than he should.

She turned back to find him watching her, a curious expression furrowing his brows but stretching a faint smile across his lips. He’d taken his glasses off, resting them on the desk.

“And what does all that DNA tell you about the human condition?” she asked, only slightly teasing with the nebulousness of her word choice.

“Everything I need to know.”

She didn’t hide her smile that time as she leaned carefully against the wall by the door, a cautious amount of space still separating them from door to desk. 

“I very seriously doubt that,” she said.

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. The dichotomy between his furrowed brow and tentative smile expanded to include a suspicious gaze balanced by a quick, light laugh.

“That’s because you’d rather guess at history than actually know. If I had your DNA, for example, it could tell me all about your history; that at least a quarter of your genes aren’t originally from the isles, that you have relatives from Central Europe—“

“And how in the world do you know that?” she startled, astonished.

“You said so, in that class. It occurred to me earlier today that I remember you as well. I believe you said something about your grandparents being Polish Jews who my grandparents would have wanted to kill simply for existing.”

She grimaced.

Admittedly, it had been a rather heated discussion, now that she thought about it. Things may have gotten a little passionate, perhaps too passionate. But she had a personal connection to the subject matter. As did he. It might not have been her most eloquent argument, academically speaking, even if it hadn’t been incorrect. 

He rose and walked around his desk, coming to a stop beside her as he examined the books she’d been browsing. As she faced away from the shelf and he faced towards it, side by side, their shoulders nearly touched. He continued his assessment of his collection when he continued.

“You probably weren’t wrong, inappropriate as the accusation was in the middle of a class.” She tensed despite probably deserving it. “My parents were the same, too. I’ve tried to show them the facts, since we have all this data in our DNA that’s directly at odds with the things they believe.”

He pulled a book from the many and offered it to her. 

“I like to think I see things much differently than they do. DNA doesn’t lie.”

She eyed the book. Despite all this talk about data and facts and whatever other hard science ruled his view of the world, all Hermione could focus on was the magnetism in his intelligence, the intention in the way he moved, and the reluctant blossoming of desire despite her conscious wishes.

She’d forgotten to respond: by speaking, taking the book, or otherwise.

“Seems only fair,” he said with a small shrug. “You let me borrow a book, I have plenty to share as well.”

She took it, wondering if his thoughts ran the same as hers in the brief stretch of time they both had hands on the thing between them. And if they did, what language did he think them in? Where she considered the dangers of proximity, of the significance in sharing pieces of yourself, and the draw of something unknown with the potential to be known, did he see the book as an object linking them with matter and atoms and energy?

She glanced down the satchel near her feet. She could carry her newest addition, one more and the seams would burst.

“Thank you,” she said, looking back up at him. For a moment, she’d forgotten how close they stood. She filled to the brim with questions, little curiosities about the objects in his office and the thoughts in his head. How dare he be interesting on top of being irritating and attractive. 

“When you’re done with it, you can just return it here, now that you know where my office is.”

He returned to his desk, a distinct sort of satisfaction settling around him as he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed once more. “Or you could leave it in the classroom for me to grab on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not sure if you’ve seen, but the head of my department just reassigned the room to me.”

Her jaw tensed, lips parting just enough to betray her shock. She blinked, looked down at the book in her hands, and then back up at the man behind the desk in front of her. Oh, he looked far too pleased with himself.

She breathed a small _huh_ of disbelief before grabbing her bag and departing without acknowledging his words. He could enjoy his moment of victory; she wouldn’t let it last.

She stopped halfway down the hall when she heard his voice again, calling after her.

“I’m Draco, by the way.”

She turned to find him standing just outside his door, watching her with that look of curiosity again.

“Hermione,” she replied, just loud enough to travel the corridor between them before she continued her strategic retreat. Exit stage left.


	3. ACT II, SCENE I: Hypothesis

_ “War has gone past this door. It hasn’t broken it in, nor ripped it from its hinges. It has left our door standing, accidentally; an oversight.” _

**-Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside**

Draco

Draco enjoyed winning, he always had. Top of his class, top of his field, de facto owner of the best lecture hall in Slytherin. Anyone who insisted that they didn’t immensely prefer winning over losing clearly had something to prove: like humility, or modesty, or other such absurdities invented to make the people not getting what they want feel better about that fact. 

Which is what made the email staring at him from his computer screen so exceptionally infuriating.

He’d been copied on a correspondence between his department head and someone named McGonagall, who Draco could only assume acted as head of the woman— Hermione’s— department. Something about class capacities and enrollment numbers.

They’d given the classroom back to her. He’d been the victor for less than forty-eight hours before he’d had his winnings ripped from beneath his feet. His simmering frustrations over that turn of events made focusing on his pointless lesson planning damn near impossible— mostly because he had the door to his office propped open in the hopes that he’d catch sight of her heading to or from her office. This meant that any time someone so much as stepped into the hallway his gaze snapped up, immediately disappointed and distracted. He hadn’t realized how many people wandered around the fifth floor of Slytherin Labs on any given day. 

His lesson plan had been fucked from the moment he read the email reassigning the room. He groaned, releasing a deep, annoyed sigh as he closed his laptop with a forceful snap. When he looked back up he caught a glimpse of chestnut curls turning the corner and out of sight. 

“Shit,” he muttered, sliding his chair back and standing. With as much composed dignity as he could manage, Draco quickly locked his office door and hurried down the hall with the intent to catch up with her at the elevators.

But she was nowhere to be found. Puzzled, Draco glanced around, raking a hand through his hair to ensure it stayed swept back and out of his face despite his harried power walk. 

His attention landed on the door to the stairwell. He nearly rolled his eyes; he certainly wouldn’t put it past her to be the kind of person who exclusively used stairs instead of elevators. Convenience be damned. 

As he entered the stairwell, he wondered if Gryffindor Hall even had elevators. He wouldn’t have been surprised if those bleeding social science types lived and died and were martyred by a thousand steps. 

He peered over the railing to peek between the floors. A flash of chestnut a couple of landings below confirmed his suspicions.

“Hermione,” he spoke into the stairwell, the sound of his voice bouncing off the narrow walls and tripping down the stairs in her direction.

She paused, head tilted in a moment of confusion before the rest of her mass of curls came into view, first peering down over the railing, then twisting to look upward.

“Oh,” she smirked. “It’s you.”

He might have deserved that.

“Wait there just a second,” he said, pulling away from the railing and launching down the stairs, rapid footfalls as he made up the distance between them.

She met him on the next landing, clearly ignoring his direction to wait where she was, and he nearly barreled into her. He had to grip the railing to slow himself, skidding to a halt so close to her that he could smell whatever it was that made her smell like a damned vanilla sweet.

He straightened but didn’t step back. Neither did she. Their standoff evidently extended to personal space in stairwells.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a smile that said she knew perfectly well why he might want to speak with her. He felt something akin to a rockslide reconfiguring his internal geology.

He’d been thinking about what he wanted to say to her since the moment he read the email Snape had blind copied him on. He’d considered from every angle, every different tone, every potential combination of letters to sounds to words to sentences to convey just how very annoyed he was with her.

But he found he’d forgotten every last fucking one of those responses when forced into such close proximity, that infuriatingly soft smile cracking shale and chipping limestone: excavating something modestly called curiosity, aggressively called infatuation. 

“Why not take the elevators?” he asked instead, and with far more accusation than the question required.

Her eyebrows bunched together but her smile didn’t waver, not this time. A few days and only two interactions and she’d apparently already grown accustomed to the occasional ire in his tone.

“Does it offend you? My not taking the elevators?” 

“That’s not the point—”

“You asked the question—”

“What if you requested a different room?” he asked, nearly a demand. “Also, Christ—” he reached out to liberate the overburden satchel from her right shoulder. “You’re going to do permanent damage to your back if you keep carrying these like this.”

In example, he slung the bag over his shoulder, crossing it over his chest to better distribute the weight.

“Are you planning on carrying those to the library for me?” she asked.

“If you’d be willing to rescind your claim on the classroom,” he countered.

She rolled her eyes and he had to clench his teeth to stop himself from saying something inadvisable in the face of her flippancy.

“Why do you want it so badly, anyway? It’s a nice room, I suppose, but every room in this building is nice.”

“The air conditioning is aimed in such a way that it never blows directly on me while I’m teaching. It has better acoustic than the smaller rooms in the building. And it’s the closest hall to my office.”

“Extra steps aren’t so awful, you could even try taking the stairs regularly.”

He scowled at her, drawing a deep, calming breath lest he snap. 

“How can I convince you?” he finally asked, staring down at her and realizing for the first time that he was a good head taller than her, minus the gravity-defying physics experiment masquerading as her hair. It hit him, quite unexpectedly, that he was towering over her in an empty stairwell, openly on the combative end of the conversational spectrum and she didn’t look fazed in the slightest. 

“You could buy me dinner once I’m finished at the library,” she said without so much as a blink, staring up at him: giving as good as she got.

To Draco’s credit, he masked his shock well. What might have been a surprised drop of his jaw segued easily into a smirk. Their proximity suddenly felt much less predatory and much more pleasant.

But there were still negotiations to be had.

“And if I did, you’d request a new room?” he posed.

In the beat of silence that passed between his ask and her answer, he could practically see the thoughts twisting and turning inside her head. It was a fascinating thing to witness.

“I’d consider it,” she said. 

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Stickler for details, are you?”

“Would hate to leave something open to conjecture.”

She hadn’t dropped eye contact, if anything, she squared her shoulders and set her jaw, prepared for a fight.

“I’d consider it,” she repeated, unwilling to amend her terms.

Draco ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, measuring his breath with a jaw he willed to unwind. 

“I’ll buy you dinner anyway.”

Finally, a reaction. In the space of a blink, he registered her minute surprise. Surprise, but not necessarily disappointment.

The disappointment belonged to him.

“Ah—actually,“ he started, “I’m supervising some experiments in the building tonight.”

She pursed her lips, tilting her head just enough that a small riot of curls not currently contained in what he assumed was meant to be a bun atop her head dislodged, wafting outwards, and spiraling with a life of their own. He almost reached for them: delicate, fascinating helixes like the models in his office.

“Does supervising experiments mean you can’t have dinner?”

His smirk shifted to a smile.

“No, I can. I’ll spend most of my time in my office hoping they don’t need me. If they need me that usually means something catastrophic has gone wrong.”

“Well that settles it then, I’ll just bring dinner to your office.”

“I thought I was supposed to be buying _ you _ dinner?”

“You’ll just have to get it next time.”

She held a hand out and for a moment, idiotically, he almost thought she wanted him to take it. Then, he realized she needed her bag back.

“I’ll spare you the book delivery since you’ve got catastrophes to prevent,” she said.

He allowed a small laugh, simultaneously exhausted by and drawn to whatever made her so fascinating. He lifted the strap over his head and handed it to her, surprised by the relief at being free of such weight. It was truly astonishing how she managed it on a day to day basis.

“I’ll see you in a few hours, then,” he said, careful not to phrase it as a question. Cautious not to crush the interesting thing they’d just agreed upon.

“A few hours,” she agreed. And then she left him there, standing alone on the third floor landing in the Slytherin Lab stairwell. 

He let out a puff of air, partially stunned, but mostly exhilarated by the hypothesis roaring to life inside his head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you SO much for reading! i certainly hope you're having a good time!! <3


	4. ACT II, SCENE II: Experiment

_ “If I sequenced my own genome and showed it to a geneticist, she would be able to say approximately where on the planet I or my ancestors came from by matching variants in my genome with the geographic patterns of variants across the globe. She would not, however, be able to tell whether I was smart or dumb, tall or short, or almost anything else that matters with respect to how I function as a human being.”  _

**-Svante Paabo, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes**

Hermione

Hermione paused, taking a moment to sweep the curls out of her face after she entered the stairwell in Slytherin Labs, all while toting a bag of take out and a perpetually overburdened satchel of books. She’d been buoyed by adrenaline and an unreasonable rush of courage when she suggested dinner, only partly teasing. But now that several hours had passed and she had the actual food in her hands, her confidence wavered.

She couldn’t even decide if she liked him very much, truth be told. She thought she did, more than she wanted to, really. There was something inescapable about him, compelling as an interesting character study. And what could be more interesting than a frustratingly handsome scientist with an unsavory family history, prickly disposition, and a sneer that looked so practiced it entirely lost its effect. Alright, perhaps she liked him a bit.

And she didn’t mind the gold wire-rimmed glasses, either. 

Shame he wasn’t wearing them when she knocked on the frame to his open office door. 

He had his back to her, absorbed in a spreadsheet packed as full as her bag of books, but instead of history and literature, he dealt in numbers and isolated strings of letters that said something in a language she didn’t know how to speak. She couldn’t decide if she loved or hated the idea of it.

When he turned at the sound of her knock, he almost looked surprised to see her. She held up the paper bag of take out and offered him a smile.

“Still have time to eat?” she asked, careful to keep her voice light as her self confidence questioned every series of events that brought her to this point. She’d just barreled into the far extents of her boldness, pressed against a barrier that told her this might have been a bad idea.

The surprise only lasted a moment, however, as he swiveled his chair around and began clearing space on the desk between them.

“Of course,” he said. “Although I half convinced myself I’d entirely imagined our conversation this afternoon.”

Hermione dropped the parcel of food on the desk and her bag on the floor, helping herself to the chair across from him. Just for fun, she prodded, “What even is reality, anyway?” 

She’d meant it philosophically.

“You mean in terms of quantum physics?” he asked. “I don’t have an exceptional grasp of that field but if you’d like to talk science I won’t complain—”

“Or we could discuss history,” she interrupted with a roll of her eyes, pulling containers of curry and rice from the bag.

“Why would we do that?”

She smiled, thinking he must be kidding, but he looked deadly serious. 

“It  _ is _ interesting, you know,” she said.

He shrugged, graciously accepting the food. He winked at her and she couldn’t help but snort, rather indelicately, at his contrarianism.

“So tell me about this aversion of yours towards my entire department,” she prompted, taking a bite of her food and leaning back in the chair, prepared for whatever nonsense he might spew.

“It’s not just your department, don’t feel special,” he quipped. “I don’t especially enjoy the imprecise. Things like history,” he gestured to her as if she were the embodiment of such an idea, “and literature and philosophy; it’s all just layers of interpretation obscuring the facts.”

Hermione considered him. As absurd as the statement was, he at least had a nice way of articulating it. And she did enjoy eloquence more that she probably should. 

She motioned towards the screen behind him, laden with information she couldn’t hope to understand. “Do you not make a habit of  _ interpreting _ data as a scientist?”

“When something is interpreted from data in science there are processes to check that interpretation, requirements of replication, methodology, bias. I suppose what I meant to say is that in a field like yours it’s more a matter of whose opinion is most popular.”

“That’s hardly what it is. Sure, sometimes certain voices are louder than others. But the beauty in studying something like history or literature or philosophy is that there are so many different ways to consider something, even if some ideas are a little less than perfect. They still add value to the discussion.”

Draco raised a brow, eyes narrowed as if to question whether even she believed what she’d just said, since he clearly did not.

Suddenly, he rotated his chair again, returning to the computer on the other side of the small office. Hermione shifted, trying to peek at whatever had so effectively stolen his attention. Quiet stretched in the space just long enough that she started to wonder if he’d forgotten her presence altogether before he partly rotated towards her, a smirk on his face. 

“Let me show you something,” he said, motioning for her to join him.

Hermione set her fork down and walked around the desk, eliminating the furniture between them. Something about her path, just a few steps, felt planned, preordained, blocked as stage direction when she came to a halt next to his chair.

He referenced the screen. It looked no different than it had before, at least to her eye: a jumble of data that meant nothing to those not trained in its specificities.

“That’s me. Everything relevant about me, right there in my genes.”

Hermione held her smile behind her teeth, lost for a time at the edge of pride in his voice.

“None of that means anything to me,” she said. Letters and numbers and symbols and figures, none of it added up, or surely could add up, to the complexity of a living breathing human being. “Is this typically how you get to know people?” she asked, releasing her stalled smirk. 

“Only when I’m proving a point that it’s a perfectly accurate way to do so. See here. This segment here says that I’m statistically unlikely to enjoy the taste of coriander.”

Hermione watched him, waiting. He simply looked up at her from his chair. A silent stalemate. He was going to make her ask.

She sighed, nearly overcome with an infantile urge to wipe the smirk off his face with a kick to the shin, particularly when he chuckled at her noticeable frustration.

“And?” she relented.

“Can’t stand the stuff,” he immediately answered as he swiveled his chair back to face the computer, scrolling through all his data, in search of something else.

“Interesting as that is, I doubt statistics like that can help you truly get to know someone. To know their likes and dislikes, to come to like someone as a person, not just a series of facts.”

She leaned against the desk next to his computer, her right hip dangerously close to where his hand scrolled and searched with his mouse. She crossed her arms in challenge.

He glanced up at her, attention torn from his screen. She bit at the inside of her lip to keep from smirking when she saw the moment he realized how little space existed between them. He sat further back in his chair, pulling himself out of the almost stooped position he’d adopted in his search of facts and figures on a screen. He swiveled, just slightly, to angle himself towards her.

His knee barely knocked against hers, but it was enough to send a jolt straight up her leg.

A confused look crossed his features, transient, before he spoke.

“But it does explain those things, just not with the poetry people are often so attached to. The letters in my genes can explain everything I’d need to know about human connection— attraction.”

She laughed, “You’re making that up. That’s— much too complicated to be explained in there.” She gestured at the computer, but more accurately, at the DNA mapped within it.

His eyes narrowed and Hermione had a small sinking feeling like she’d just been caught in a cleverly laid trap.

“You think the evolutionary imperative to reproduce that’s literally encoded into our DNA has no impact on the things we find attractive in a potential mate?”

She snorted again. 

“I can’t take you seriously if you’re going to throw around the word  _ mate _ .”

He rolled his eyes, “it explains things like community, too. There’s been an evolutionary advantage for our species to build communities, to foster strong interpersonal connections.”

“Careful, sounds like you might be getting dangerously close to the social sciences,” she teased. “We wouldn’t want all these bones witnessing your work thinking you’ve gone soft.”

He turned his chair a fraction further, slight pressure of his knee against hers, facing her more directly.

“They won’t mind, they’re long dead.”

The yellow light of his office lamps, coupled with the golden rays from the setting sun peeking through slotted blinds, cast a warmth across what was normally a much more platinum countenance. Hermione dropped her arms, determined not to focus too closely on his smirk, and how it nearly made her willing to forget how frustrating he could be.

“So you’re admitting there might be more to it than science?”

“I’m admitting I’d rather not fumble with semantics at the moment.”

When she looked at his eyes, a warm yellowing glow splayed across a silver pool, she wondered about the science of that moment. The biology of heat radiating from where his knee pressed against hers. The chemistry of chemicals making their presence known inside her head. The physics of whatever dared to draw her in, awareness of a decision bonded to the oxygen in the diminishing air between them.

And how those explanations paled in comparison to calling it what it was: attraction, fascination, desire. And all of this in spite of what logic told her she should seek in someone. At the very least, someone with a compatible world view.

But this man saw the world in a way entirely separate from her own. Science couldn’t possibly explain something so contradictory. It couldn’t possibly be encoded in their genes that despite, or perhaps because of, their wildly differing ideas she felt compelled to seek his touch.

And she would have, she was sure of it, if his cell phone hadn’t started blaring in the moment she saw him start to move as well.

“Fuck,” he muttered, startled as much as she was by the sudden sound in what had been an utterly silent space.

“Catastrophe?” she asked, shifting away just enough to break the tentative contact they’d been sharing. 

“Possibly,” he grimaced, texting someone with a truly impressive speed and aggression. He tossed the phone rather carelessly on his desk. “I have to go,” he said, standing.

Whatever space she’d created between them vanished in that single movement.

“I can’t give you the classroom,” she said against her better judgement, hyper-aware from head to toe just how close he stood. “I got my final registration numbers this afternoon, it’s the only hall with the capacity for it.”

He blinked, still crowding her personal space. His smirk faded, but into something unexpected, something— almost impressed.

“Enjoy the room, then,” he said, in a low voice as his words spilled beneath his breath. She hadn’t even noticed the curl he had between two fingers, pulled taut until the point he released it, springing back into its usual spiral. He breathed a final  _ huh _ of fascination as he finally retreated to the door, reiterating that he had to go but she was welcome to stay and finish her dinner if she liked.

She didn’t stay: nearly as tightly wound as the curls in her hair. She gathered her belongings and left, leaving his food neatly repackaged on his desk for when he returned from his unexpected intermission. 


	5. ACT III, SCENE I: Analysis

_ “Responsibility is not just a word, a chemical formula for changing warm human flesh into cold, grey earth. One can’t let men die for the sake of an empty word.” _

**-Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside**

Draco

After all the hassle and all the riling and all the tension of having her in his office, so infuriatingly close and so blessedly at a distance, Draco didn’t have a chance to see Hermione again before the start of the semester. Though that fact wasn’t for lack of insatiable curiosity and unusually open office doors on his behalf, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He  _ really _ should have asked for her phone number before disappearing mid-meal to deal with the ramifications of two absolute morons being trusted to run an experiment without his direct and immediate supervision. 

To add insult to his social injury, it turned out that his class schedule only overlapped with hers for a single hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If not for the fact that they both had a class at three in the afternoon they could very well have just shared the room. The fact that Draco hadn’t thought to check whether or not such a thing could be possible probably gave away the fact that he’d been an only child far more than he might have liked. 

And so, on the first Tuesday of the semester, since he didn’t have classes until noon, he decided to sit in on Hermione’s nine o’clock class. Morbid curiosity drove him to do it, his partly rational mind insisted. He needed to know more about her, about the subject she was so passionate about, about anything and everything that travelled between the neurons in her brain. 

He took a seat in the last row of the hall, hoping to fade into the background, but knowing that his bright blond hair usually made him a fixture for attention despite his best efforts to the contrary. That, and the several years worth of age difference between himself and the hoard of bleary undergraduates filing in. 

Hermione noticed him almost immediately: attempts at flying under the radar thwarted. She entered the room through the right side doors, as he suspected she would since they were the closest to the stairwell and the entrance to the building. Regardless of whether she came from her office or the campus at large, the right side would be her closest entry point.

Which was exactly why he’d chosen to sit near the other set of doors of the left side of the hall. However, such strategy only earned him mere minutes of anonymity before she started an assessment of her students from the front of the room: learning the new faces she’d been spending a semester with, imbuing fresh minds with her specific brand of knowledge.

When her gaze tracked to him at the end of her sweep he watched as her eyes widened, just like they had the first time they met in that room. He smirked. She blinked. He leaned against his left elbow, watching her with measured interest, daring her to say something.

Instead, she gave the tiniest roll of her eyes and pulled about six books out of her bag, continuing her preparations for class.

And then it started.

And it was a fucking turn on he was  _ not _ expecting. He’d planned to be entertained, fascinated: perhaps to formulate a few interesting points to argue when he inevitably tried to find an excuse to buy her that dinner he’d promised. 

But he had not expected to be utterly enthralled, captivated by a woman clearly in her element.

Despite the fact that the first day was mostly logistical and only touched on high-level concepts to prepare for the semester, the way she laid out her points to examine post-war Germany, a topic he both knew very little about and cared very little to learn, kept him fascinated. The play she’d given him would somehow connect to a film she had on the syllabus, which bore relevance to a temporary art exhibit they’d spend a day visiting. She had an entire week dedicated to declassified intelligence files, another for biographies examining both civilian and military perspectives, and yet another to Soviet influences and Germany’s significance as the epicenter of cold war political tensions. It was fascinating and bizarre and pulled from just about every discipline Draco could think of while still, somehow, making sense.

What it would be like to live inside that brain. To witness the genesis of an idea as it sparked to life on an electrical current barreling towards cognition.

“I realize this is a packed schedule for the semester, but as you can see, we have a very logical, precise timeline to follow. So long as we don’t get too sidetracked by tangential discussions—” she smiled, as if fondly remembering just the thing she’d warned against. “—we should be able to successfully tackle all of this material with very little challenge.”

And just like that; the hour had passed. Draco might have witnessed rapture in that moment and not realized it. Not when the ground had reached up and swallowed him, but only just, only enough to keep him rooted to the spot, man made earth, still as stone. 

“Are there any questions before we dismiss for the day?” she asked.

And of course there were. Idiotic questions. Questions covered by her very words not minutes earlier. Questions covered in the content of the syllabus if the imbeciles would deign to acknowledge the document. Her patience with these questions made her an infinitely better teacher than Draco; he could admit that much. When the pointless questions finally ceased and the students began shuffling out, Draco remained in his seat.

He propped his feet up on the chair in front of him, watching her packing up her bag at the front of the class. He crossed his arms, waiting as she pointedly did not acknowledge him. He spoke up only when the last student had finally gone.

“I actually have a question.”

She sighed, dropping her bag on the table and turning to look at him. She leaned against the desk, tilting her head, brow arched: waiting.

“Seems like you haven’t let much room in this syllabus for conjecture, discussion outside of what you have planned. Where’s the spontaneity in learning?” He swung his legs off the chair and stood before approaching the front of the room.

She followed his every movement. He knew, because he watched her as he moved, anticipating her response.

“That seems like a very imprecise way to go about teaching. Students are here to learn facts, after all: acquire knowledge, analyze it, evaluate, and distill it in their own words in their end of term papers. Is that not enough conjecture for you?”

“Seems rather beholden to a strict set of guidelines.”

“Much like your beloved scientific method, I suspect.”

He stopped directly in front of her.

“Bone mortar,” he said.

She blinked rapidly.

“What?”

He pulled the play from his own small bag and flipped to a page he had marked. Because, try as he might not to be interested in the piece of literature, something about the fact that she’d given it to him, that she thought it worthy of her own curriculum, drove his curiosity to devour the thing.

He cleared his throat and cocked a brow at her for a touch of dramatic effect. She looked poised between being completely stunned and overwhelmed with delight.

“And somewhere underneath lies my body. A bit of mud and mortar and sludge. Human mud, bone mortar,” he read.

He closed the book, offering it to her.

“I liked that line,” he said. “Reminded me of what I do. I think it’s fair to say that I work with bone mortar.”

She took the book, mouth stretching into a smile.

“I don’t know, I would argue that bone mortar isn’t just the literal material you pull from the dirt. It’s history, and  _ conjecture _ , in the bones from one body, able to be used as building material in humanity’s history.”

He wanted to twist his fingers in her curls, watch them wind around his digits and envelope his fists in something soft and confusing and unknowable.

“And that’s exactly what bone mortar does in the literal sense too,” he said, sinking into the earth tones of her irises. “I’m simply adding more information to man’s story.” 

“That’s rather poetic of you, I hope you realize.”

“I’m still very much a scientist, you haven’t converted me that easily.”

“But I could convert you?”

“Probably not.”

She laughed and for some reason, he hadn’t expected she’d find that funny. He stepped closer and he saw the biology at work: an intake of breath, dilation of the pupils, an unconscious whetting of lips. But he saw the rest too: a challenging posture, a determined stare, careful evaluation.

“You are the most fascinating question I want to know the answer to,” he breathed, closer still.

He heard the quiet stutter in her breathing when he reached out, hand winding around her waist.

“If the question is whether or not you should kiss me, you should,” she said, staring up at him with a dare in her eye, chin lifted.

And when he did, one hand finally finding a place amongst the spirals that defined her, he endeavored to savor his moment, to learn everything there was to know about this woman through her lips and her breath and her tongue that said so many infuriating, fascinating things.

He ran a hand along her hip, pulling her close as he learned the texture of her mouth and the shape of her sighs. He might never move from that place again, a statue erected in monument to whatever propaganda she wanted to peddle, whatever truths she wanted to unveil, whatever lies she wanted to tell him. He’d believe them all. 

She had her hands pressed to his chest, greedy fingers scraping at the fabric of his shirt, dragging him in, or perhaps dragging him down.  _ Fuck _ he’d never been so tempted to bend someone over a desk in his life, and he spent a  _ lot _ of time around desks: the opportunities for such wayward thought were plenty. He pulled back, just enough that her whimper of disapproval tasted like a command against his mouth. 

He resisted the urge to bend, to taste every inch of skin along her jaw, her neck, her shoulders: whatever she’d allow. Instead, he pulled a breath, oxygen flooding the deprived recesses of his brain gone dormant in asphyxiation by desire. 

“We’re still in your classroom,” he said against her ear, body pressed against hers in a way that warmed cool stone to something molten by way of his words.  _ Your classroom _ . 

“Someone could walk in,” she agreed, a finger absently toying with the buttons of his shirt.

“My office is closer,” he said

“Mine doesn’t have skeletons in it.”

He smirked. No further analysis required.


	6. ACT III, SCENE II: Conclusion

_“Science is far from the objective and impartial search for incontrovertible truths that nonscientists might imagine. It is, in fact, a social endeavor where dominating personalities and disciples of often defunct yet influential scholars determine what is ‘common knowledge.’”_

**-Svante Paabo, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes**

Hermione

They decided on his office in the end, despite the skeletons, since she shared hers and they were trying to _avoid_ being walked in on. She even conceded to take the elevator, not especially interested in prolonging their journey to the fifth floor. 

Admittedly, she might not mind adding elevators to her daily routines if they involved this much _touch_ on a regular basis. 

Hermione had never been so infuriated and irritated kissing someone in her entire life. And she couldn’t get enough of it. Every time their kisses peaked, maxed out in tension and bliss and something worryingly warm in the center her chest he would pull away, drop tiny, barely-there kisses on her neck and then tease her with fingertips twisting strands of her hair or tracing the shape of her mouth. He’d pull back, create space, and then bring them together again in what became both the best and worst elevator ride of her life. Her trusty stairwells never tortured her in such a way.

When they reached his office, the door swinging shut with too much force, he pressed her against his shelves, rows upon rows of books and bones and she didn’t mind in the slightest. Not when one of his hands had started drifting down the side of her blouse, erupting shivers in her spine as he touched ribs and waist and hips.

“To be clear,” he murmured, mouth pressed against hers, words spoken directly into her being. “You’re fucking brilliant.”

She canted against him, hips seeking friction in the vacuum of space. She bit his lip, probably too hard, savoring his hiss as his hand on her waist jerked her against him.

“You’re brilliant,” she said, dragging her hands down the surface of his chest. Scientists weren’t meant to be so fit. “You can read a person’s history in a series of four little letters.” She barely finished her sentence, breath catching as his fingers found her skin beneath the hem of her shirt, tiny eruptions of electricity jolting beneath her skin. 

“Know a little something about DNA do you?” he asked, his breath coasting hot against her cheeks, as much a part of her biology as his own. She silenced his snark with a kiss, one hand finding his jaw to force him to focus, to stall his teasing wandering.

Even still, she could feel the words smothered between their lips, whatever he wanted or needed to say stuck between them as she sought solutions to her sudden ravenousness in whatever science of attraction he intended to offer.

“Are you planning on talking about how brilliant we are or are we going to get to the point?” she finally asked in the absence of touch required for her to reoxygenate her lungs: a small reprieve from delicious, insistent kisses.

He smiled, wide and wolfish, a thrill so primal she nearly forgot the basis of her attraction to begin with. For a moment, his argument almost won, a point for the biological urges encoded in her DNA.

“I’m fully intending on doing both,” he said. He pressed harder, the small of her back bisected by a narrow shelf, the spine of a book just a bit too long jutting into her vertebrae, and something else, formerly animate in nature, a mandible perhaps, poking at her right shoulder.

And none of it made a difference to her experience when his mouth dropped to her neck and his hips pressed even harder against hers. She’d been snared, trapped, a caged animal with no desire to escape. 

“What’s the science behind this, then? How does science explain pinning me to a bookshelf?” she asked, finding a moment to tease when his mouth was otherwise occupied with the skin of her neck and jaw. 

“Complaining?” he muttered against her ear as his hands began a study of the buttons on her blouse, toying, one by one, as he undid them. The thrill of it warmed her, a hot rush of under the intensity of his gaze, the precision in his movements.

“Not at all,” she struggled to say as his hands carved canyons into her bare skin. Her own button-related dexterity faltered on his shirt as his hand brushed over the fabric of her bra, fingers trained in specialized sciences delivering an equally specialized kind of touch. 

Her head fell back as her throat opened: a gust of breath bound to a moan forcing its way into the room with them. Even through closed lids she could see his smirk, feel it against the top of her breast where his mouth wandered.

She remembered her hands, resuming her clumsy unbuttoning of his shirt, descending. She pulled his shirttails from where they had somehow remained tucked despite all the grappling and grabbing and greediness powering her every bone from wrist to fingertip.

She sank, forgetting in a spark of pleasure that she had to use her legs to hold herself up as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her pants he’d managed to unbutton while she’d been distracted by her own explorations. 

Infuriatingly, or perhaps wonderfully, he was strong enough to keep her steady until she straightened her legs.

“This isn’t just science,” she panted, her breath practically stalling in her chest. She gripped his shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut as those lovely, dextrous fingers struck a match against her core, setting her aflame.

“Of course it is,” he said. The hoarse grit to his voice undercut his attempt at confidence. “It’s a biological imperative.” A kiss that stole her breath. “Reproduction, recombination of DNA.” A kiss that stole her pulse. “Fucking— where am I going with this?” A kiss that stole her cognition, and probably his as well.

“If this was just about reproduction,” she said, words fading to a whimper. Her every thought had narrowed to the sensations of a shelf digging into her back, his exposed chest pressed against hers, and his hand inside her knickers: striking flint to sparks. “If it was just about—“ she tried again. “You wouldn’t be so invested in getting me off— _god_ , oh—”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked against her ear, efforts increased as she tumbled perilously close to the borders of science and nature and oblivion. “Maybe I want you to keep me around.”

She arched. Maybe she would.

But she knew it was more than science, more than DNA directing her thoughts and actions and attractions. Because Draco’s mouth could melt stone against her skin and his hands damn near debilitated her under his touch. And those things were forged in whatever connection and conjectures they’d started to form outside of scientific explanation. 

In a flood of chemicals whose names she did not know and the jolt of electricity that contorted a series of muscles she never bothered to memorize, she admitted there was some science involved, of course there was, but there was something else too. And it felt a lot like magic.

Climax, conclusion, curtain close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i certainly hope these two intellectual idiots brought you some joy xD

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out with me on [tumblr](http://mightbewriting.tumblr.com/), its a good time!


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